New classrooms allow more places for pupils

09-0719-1''Newstead Primary School and Nursery.

Millions of pounds are to be pumped into local education with hundreds of extra school places created across Nottinghamshire.

To help cope with demand arising from the natural increase in the area’s birth rates, more than £36.7m will be received between 2015 and 2017 from the Department For Education.

For the 2015/16 academic year, it is expected that £16.7m will be ploughed into places, with a further £17.5 the following year.

It comes after £7.66m is already been spent this year on creating hundreds of places for youngsters at schools across the county including Hucknall’s Leen Mills Primary.

Expansion projects are now planned for further schools in our region, including Newstead Primary, Hawthorne Primary in Bestwood Village and Kirkby Woodhouse Primary.

“We are delighted with the news,” said headteacher of Newstead Primary, Helen Woodward. “We will be expanding with two extra classrooms which will be of modular construction to help accommodate our current pupils and our future pupil projections.”

Work will start in the coming months and it is hoped the new classrooms will be available for the start of the Autumn term in September.

“It is well overdue as the extra space is much-needed and will help alleviate the current pressure on the school as well as allow us to plan for future pupils.”

Sara Williams, the Nottinghamshire County Council’s capital investment officer, said: “These allocations reflect very positively on our efforts in preparing the annual school capacity and places data return this year.

“We introduced a number of changes to the way we present the countywide data in order to show more clearly the various ‘hotspots’ around the county where there is particular pressure on places.

“Later this month, as soon as we have them, we will start analysing the next pupil projections data which will allow us to more accurately assess where additional places will be needed from September 2015 onwards.

“We cannot base where places are required from the very high level county-wide totals, so we continually examine very carefully how trends develop in local areas,” added Mrs Williams.

“From this, we can identify quite specifically which schools need to be expanded in order to meet demand in the localities that have greatest pressure on places.”